Electric ceiling fans are commonly utilized to assist heating and air conditioning systems or to provide air circulation within a room. Many modern ceiling fans consist of an electric motor suspended from a ceiling on a shaft, with a number of fan blades rotated by the motor.
It is also desirable to have an electric ceiling fan where the fan blades can be retracted during periods of non-use and then extended during conventional use. The state of the art includes several methods for accomplishing this, including the device taught by U.S. Pat. No. 7,857,591. However, the existing designs utilize multiple motors one for rotating the fan blades during conventional use and one to deploy and retract each fan blade. This can make the fan design overly complicated and heavy.
Accordingly, there is a need for a fan having retractable and deployable fan blades, where the same motor is used to deploy and retract the fan blades and to rotate the fan blades during conventional use.